The COP17/CMP7 Finally Draws to a Close.

With the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) seemingly under attack from all sides there was no room at the COP17/CMP7 to either create a replacement for the soon to expire Kyoto Protocol or reduce global greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions and it seemed to me to be a fools errand to even try. So prior to the politicians turning up the focus of the summits was on adaptation and mitigation.

Covered by the Nairobi Work Program (NWP) adaptation is pretty self-explanatory. It is about enabling nations to adapt to the effects of climate change through the sharing of technology and best practice. In places like Pakistan the focus is on flood defences to help them cope with the extreme flooding of last year and this year. In places like east Africa the focus is on anti-desertification methods and drought resistant farming methods in order to prevent things like the East African food crisis/famine. If global warming is something that humans cannot control or cannot be bothered to control then adaptation methods are going to become ever more essential as the negative effects of climate change become more frequent and widespread.

Mitigation is a more complex area. Basically it is getting nations to mitigate climate change by reducing their total ghg emissions. However rather then just adopting green technologies like renewable power generation it also tries to bring about structural changes to a nations economy to make it more environmentally friendly through reducing energy consumption for example and improving their management of natural ghg emitters such as peat bogs and natural ghg sinks such as forests. It also overlaps into adaptation because taking Haiti as an example their extreme deforestation has left them at greater risk from extreme weather events such as flooding and landslides. So simply planting more trees can both cut their ghg emissions and protect them from the effects of climate change.

At the COP17/CMP7 the main focus of mitigation efforts was on the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) which essentially pays developing nations like Ecuador to not cut down their rainforests. The hope is that this program will eventually form the basis for a global carbon trading mechanism that turns living and breathing trees into an economic resource like timber. Unfortunately there was a concerted effort by nations like Britain and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) itself to hijack these negotiations and turn them into a referendum on the DRC, it's chaotic election, it's multitude of internal conflicts and how they're funded through the illegal trade in minerals such as diamonds. Although these are all valid areas for discussion they are issues that are best dealt with through the Kimberly Process which was set up for just that purpose.

This hijacking is hardly a surprise though because many developed nations don't even consider the REDD+ program to be about global warming/climate change. Outside the Amazon basin the highest proportion of tropical rainforest is in sub-Saharan Africa - a part of the world that also has very high levels of HIV/AIDS infection. There is a global charity to fight HIV/AIDS called RED so calling the anti-deforestation program REDD+ was never going to lead to clear and concise negotiations. In fact with most of the talk relating to issues surrounding barrier methods, leakage, hard and soft options and what a nation does with it's wood REDD+ negotiations were always more likely to descend into a Carry On film then result in a meaningful global agreement.

At the moment both the NWP and REDD+ fall under the remit of something called the Ad-hoc Working Group for Long-term Co-operative Action (AWG-LCA). In itself this presents a problem because the mandate for the AWG-LCA is set to expire in early 2012. If that mandate is not renewed or a replacement body established the NWP and REDD+ will become the responsibility of the already overworked and underfunded Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Assistance (SBSTA) and progress will slow dramatically. At the COP16/CMP6 in Cancun it was agreed that adaptation and mitigation efforts would be taken up by the Green Climate Fund (GCF). Although called a fund the GCF is intended to act as a mechanism to connect people seeking both hard and soft technological solutions with people who can provide those solutions and donors who are prepared to fund those solutions. While the seekers will invariably be national governments the providers and donors can be national governments, private companies, private banks and charities so the majority of donations to the GCF will be things like reduced royalty rates on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) rather then cash.

After Cancun the plan was that the AWG-LCA would get the structure, board and trustees for the GCF sorted out in time for it to be opened at the COP17/CMP7 with a starting budget of US$30bn expected to rise to US$100bn by 2020. Unfortunately under the chairmanship of the United States the AWG-LCA failed miserably at this task which ground to a halt meaning that it arrived at the COP17/CMP7 only in a position to hold informal negotiations. Although I gather that some work has been done on the GCF as part of today's (11/12/11) announcement it has still fallen very far short of it's intended target.

As for furthering our knowledge of global warming/climate change and it's causes the matter wasn't even on the agenda. This is a shame because the task is actually a lot easier then it first seems. In terms of surface temperatures by which I mean everything up to the top of the troposphere the annex 1 parties already collect the necessary data as part of normal weather forecasting. The annex 2 parties either already have the capacity to collect and are already collecting the data or can easily get that capacity through the Technical Needs Assessment (TNA) mechanism. Obviously getting the United States to hand over the satellite data and getting China to hand over it's data before the US does is still going to be incredibly challenging. However it would certainly be possible for a body like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or SBSTA to put together a comprehensive surface temperature data set and publish it in time for the last pre-COP18/CMP8 meeting.

However I think the agreement at the COP17/CMP7 will actually make this task more difficult. Within the UNFCCC there are two distinct camps emerging; The EU and developing nations who are open to the idea that climate change could be caused by human activity and based on the available evidence think it is. Then there is the bloc containing the US, the Gulf states and Britain who for political and economic rather then scientific reasons will not even entertain the idea that human activity could be causing global warming and are treating the UNFCCC as a game by which they can extend their colonial control over developing nations. This second bloc is already going to come under significant pressure at the COP18/CMP8 because of the Durban deal. Putting even more pressure on them to disclose data that may well disprove their negotiating position could be enough to force them to withdraw from the process altogether making a global deal an impossibility.

So by doing the deal in Durban the UNFCCC seems to have set itself the task of going to Qatar and trying to convince a group of people of the need to take action on something they will flatly deny is taking place without the best evidence being available to convince them. I won't be holding my breath.




Edited at around 23:00 on 11/12/11 to add: A prime example of Britain's attempts to hijack the REDD+ negotiations to talk about the DRC actually took place in London on Saturday (10/12/11) night.

Along with other armed groups in the DRC Britain has supported Joesph Kabila the seemingly self-appointed President by helping him smuggle diamonds and other minerals out of the country via Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. In return Kabila arranged the DRC's first elections during the COP17/CMP7 and so obviously rigged the vote that it led to violent outcry both in the DRC and amongst Congolese ex-pats across the world.

In London a group of about 1000 of these ex-pats staged a peaceful protest in Whitehall. A group of around 20 black youths who you would assume were Congolese broke away from that demonstration and attacked a Christmas Choir concert being held in to raise money for the Macmillan cancer charity near Trafalgar Square leading to a mini-riot and 139 arrests. The international nature of the Macmillan brand coupled with the high profile of the location meant that rumours of this started swirling around the lengthy final session of the COP17/CMP7 but the virtual news black out meant that no-one could admit to knowing that it was going on and I only found out about it about four hours ago.

Mind you what delegates were doing in session almost 24 hours after the COP17/CMP7 officially ended is a mystery to me.